Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

We are working to bring about improvements in that regard.

The issue of branch offices was raised. Plans are in train to commence devolving, on a phased basis, certain decisions to branch offices. The process will begin in three or four of the larger branch offices to identify if there are training or other issues that need to be addressed before this is rolled out to all branch offices. The branch offices will deal with four categories of claims, including JB claims with full contribution histories, unlimited payments between 65 and 66 years of age, credit cases, second and subsequent children where entitlement to full or half rate increased where qualified childhood has already been established.

The issue of refund of health contributions was also raised. The refunds will apply in respect of contributions made over a four year period. On incapacity supplement, there are 114 recipients of incapacity supplement aged 66 years or over. Of those 114 people, 20 are qualifying adults aged 66 years or over. Many Members raised issues in regard to the one parent payment and so on. In an ideal world, were we not where we are, we would have one working age payment. This matter is being considered in the Department. There are many challenges in terms of moving from the current system to that type of system. The challenge is to ensure we do not go backwards. I am interested in this concept. I have long criticised the meanstesting system in the Department. Now that I am Minister for Social Protection I will be actively examining how we can achieve the type of social welfare system I would have always liked us to have. There is a huge amount of work to be done on issues such as how we count days in respect of casual work and so on. We must first decide our long-term goal and then work towards it in small steps.

The issue of data matching was raised. Data exchange with the Irish Prison Service commenced in December 2004 and in this respect data is exchanged on a quarterly basis. Data is received in secure format and is matched to relevant live claims. Where these matches indicate clients that require investigation the cases are referred for control and follow-up. I dealt yesterday in the House with the issue of electronic certification. I am often amazed how when people add one plus one they get three. In this regard I refer to the notion that people will be able to text the Department from anywhere in the world in respect of signing on for unemployment benefit. I want to clarify this matter. What I said was that there will be a certification process by mobile phone. A mobile phone has many uses, two of which are to speak to or text another person. What is involved in respect of electronic certification is voice telephony and voice recognition. If the correct person does not ring the Department the voice recognition technology will pick up on this and discontinue the call. If a person rings from outside the State the computer system will also recognise this and discontinue the call.

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